4
Monday, April 17, 1978
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unused editors represent the opinion of the Kanan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
Senate raises illogical
It is highly questionable whether the officers of the Student Senate and the student body should be paid more than they are now.
The Senate last week decided to double the salaries of the student body president and vice president and to raise those of the Senate's executive secretary and treasurer. Congress obviously has no monopoly on voting itself increases.
The raises are dubious for two reasons. The first, and most obvious, is that student activity fees are not unlimited. The Senate's primary function is to allocate those fees to student organizations, not to itself.
Yet the Senate has an internal budget of more than $50,000 of which 30 percent is marked as "unallocated." That's more than $2 a year that each KU student has to pay.
In addition, the Senate is paying its officers inconsistently. If the officers' past salaries are considered as wages for time actually spent working in the Senate offices, rather than as monthly amounts, the inconsistency is readily apparent. And it remains inconsistent under the new salaries.
LAST YEAR, before the salary legislation was submitted, the Senate published figures on how many hours a week each officer worked. On the average, Steve Leben, former student body president, worked 40 to 50 hours each week for $125 a month. Now Mike Harper will get $250 for the same work's work. That's about $1.56 an hour.
In compaison, Ralph Munyan, former student body vice president, put in about 15
hours a week for $100 a month. Reggie Robinson, his successor, will receive $200, which works out to $3.32 an hour—more than twice Harper's pay, if considered on a hourly basis.
Naturally, the amount of time spent in Student Senate jobs varies annually with the people who fill them. But it seems, nonetheless, that Harper is getting the short end of the stick.
The salaries of the executive secretary and the treasurer of the Senate also vary widely. They look the same—$170 a month under the new scale—but the executive secretary works 25 hours a week and the treasurer 15, based on the Senate figures. That means the secretary will get $1.70 an hour—still more than Harper—and the treasurer will get $2.83 an hour.
LEBEN, ONE of the bill's sponsors, has contended that the salary increases were needed to make the jobs attractive to students who need jobs to support their educations. That's superficially logical. But it still fails to explain why the president's pay is relatively low when compared with salaries of other student officials.
In addition, Leben himself has said that holding student office yields intangible prestige benefits that compensate for the low salaries.
Most significantly, however, there are student organizations desperate for funds that are being told the inevitable at the annual budget hearings: The Senate just doesn't have enough money. Or does it?
Arab funding cut urged
To the editor:
KANSAN
Letters
It was gratifying to learn that a small group of disruptive students and their followers ultimately Vilhakar Rabin His incisive analysis of the current situation in the Middle East and its historical origins stood in clear contrast to the stomping demonstrators. Their unwillingness to listen and their refusal to allow the audience to listen illustrated the type of sensitivity that characterizes so much of contemporary anti-Israel sentiment. No doubt Rabin acted quite shrewdly in exposing the evict unruly demonstrators. Giving Lawrence residents personal exposure to the mentality of the PLO sympathizers gives rise to more arguments against the PLO cause.
A broader issue that these disruptions raise is that of free speech. The KU administration ddn an adamable job of enforcing freedom, and protesters were given a forum for their ideas. Unfortunately,
these students forgot that others have rights, too. Angered by a pre-taxal counter-demonstration in front of Hochschule, the organization Shawkat Hammouden was quoted in Friday's Kansan as saying, "We gave up the east side to the Zionists, even though they didn't have a permit." We are "we?" The Organization of Arab Students? The organization has access to University property? If their show of temper indicates the way these students normally behave in class, then we can understand why Hammoudeh and his cohorts have such a poor understanding of the Constitution and the free speech in this country.
In the same article Hammoudeh referes to Arab students who were "officers" assigned to help the police with "crowd control" and observed roaming the aisles of Hoch trying to pick fights with
members of the audience while their colleagues attempted to disrupt Rabin's speech. Several times these "officers" were ordered back to their seats by regular security forces.
As the administration ponders disciplinary action for those who tried to silence Rabin, I urge the Student Senate to deny all funding of the Iranian students, the Organization of Arab students and the Persian Speaking Group of the Moslem Student Association. These were the first students whose persistence was responsible for the disruptions that were obviously planned. It may not be possible to prevent a small minority of students from stifling free speech or to stop attempts at student activism, but the student body of KU should not have to fund such activities.
Rob Kuby Lawrence junior
Like a festering sore, the cattle pasture's draw reeks of sour gas and the musty taint of residual betroleum spirits.
Pollutants threaten pastureland
Along the muddy draw, a land basin that water drains through, the three or four inches of clear water reveal coils of dead earthworms, snails and motionless frogs. Rainbows on the surface betray the盆地 beneath the gentle slope toward the Kaw River a few miles away.
The fenced-in pipeline junction, just the other side of the county road that borders the cattle pastures, spilled about 44,000 gallons of gasoline on the roadway. The road was earlier, a smaller fuel oil spill caused some contamination of the immediate area.
THE PIPELINE, owned and operated by Williams Pipeline Co., Kansas City, Mo., transports fuel oil, gasoline and liquid nitrogen to the FMC chemical plant east of Lawrence for manufacture of fertilizer.
Three acres of the affected property, leased by Wayne Parks, RFD 3, from Ralph King, a law enforcement lawyer, has been fenced off from cattle at carpentering company's ex-tense.
When it rains, the residue from the most recent spill is forced down the slope and appears as a scum tainting the runoff. Apparently, there has been no new pollution from the Dupont Tests by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, immediately after the spill and for about a month thereafter, showed that levels of lead in the watershed were as high as one or two milligrams in each liter, Bill Bryson, chief geologist for the Kansas Department of Health Environment, said last week.
SINCE THAT time, the lead levels in the watershed have diminished well below the 5 milligrams in each liter
maximum prescribed by Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. Levels since the tests immediately after the spill have declined to no detectable level to .06 milligrams. Bryson said.
Parks raises about 30 head of cattle, a mixture of dairy and beef strains bred to a good beef bull to obtain the best qualities of both lines. Can a man who regards his rural avocation as a labor of love, science and art work with his pasture so contaminated that simple forms of life cannot survive?
"We've got a check down at the house, a photostatic copy, but we're not putting out the amount of the check," he said.
Parks said he couldn't reveal the amount of the settlement he get from the pipeline company.
BRYSON SAID that the June 23 spill occurred because the gaskets on the junction failed under the high-pressure line, but the water was drained. Most of the gasoline's volatile spirits escaped, leaving the waxy residue. What's happening now is the slow washing down of the watered into a seawater bed and into the Kaw River.
"But I'll say this, they haven't begun to pay me for the amount of hassle this has caused."
That the pipeline company did not have adequate clean up procedures was apparent, Parks said.
"The sheriffs and the Lawrence fire truck were out there and had the area blocked up. They didn't have the pipeline people got here," Parks said. "Even then they couldn't do anything except shut the valve off. They don't have enough water, clean up procedures on file."
EPA regulations require field clean up procedures only for fuel storage plants, not for
transportation spills, Bryson said.
ATTEMPTS TO contact authorities at Williams Pipeline Co. were unsuccessful. A manager was sent a way and lines manager, said that Barth was out of the office and that there was no one in the office who would be able to contact company's position on the matter.
There are more than 50,000 miles of similar pipelines in Kansas, Bryson said. The rights of way are issued by the Kansas Department of Transportation. The number of spillages of water by Bryson was estimated by Bryson to be 40 a year.
A Douglas County zoning administrator, Wayne Ketchum, said that anything that might pose a threat to the environment could be the county's responsibility, but instead was the state's job to correct.
Bryson, however, said the matter could go no further with his agency.
"WE HAVE gone about as far as we can with the investigation," he said. "About 10 percent of the cases to give Parks its best reputation."
Inspections by the state have determined that there is no pipeline leak feeding more water, watershed, according to Bryson
"We felt that Williams Brothers did a pretty good job on this one, and they worked with a pretty difficult situation.
"We've written a letter to Williams Brothers about putting in some scaled dike walls would be contained on site."
The state's recommendation, Bryson said, would be that such a barrier, probably using a plastic barrier under an earth berm, would be submitted by him "within the next month or so."
Both Bryson and Parks have said that there is always the chance of spillage and inundation with petine-transported materials.
IN PARKS' dylicic pastures, against the backdrop of rolling hills and lowing cattle, the pipeline seems a menace. And although there are warning signs against the hazardous materials transported by the pipeline disappeared, as Parks has said, "My cattle can't read and neither can the frogs."
What price is the United States willing to pay for its gasoline and standard of living? If the price falls, the quête of Parks' land, the price seems too high. From the offices of energy companies, government unemployment agencies, the price appears equitable.
But how long will people fence off agricultural land, a steadily expanding urban sprawl, to "protect" life from the toxic bases of their soil.
Instead of fencing cattle and wildlife out, perhaps we should fence ourselves in.
Foreign gifts to colleges controversial
By DAVID M. SLOAN
WASHINGTON-What do the governments of Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Muammar Qudafi of Libya and the shah of Iran have in common?
In addition to symbolizing authoritarian rule and systematic human-rights violations, each of the governments recently has donated $10 million in funds to American universities.
Although Americans have long contributed to education abroad through foreign-assistance programs, the funding of U.S. higher education by Third World governments is certainly a new phenomenon; most students to American universities has traditionally characterized the link between the U.S. educational system and developing countries. More
recently, however, this relationship has in certain instances assumed a character than educational than educational. In essence, several controversial foreign governments are seeking to buy international legitimacy gifts to U.S. universities.
ONE OF THE latest public relations initiatives of this kind involves a $1.5 million grant from the family of Ferdinand E. Harding and University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Ford.Medford, Md.
Since declaring martial law in 1972, Marcos has attempted to defect criticism of his government. He is understandably concerned about the American perception of his U.S. underwriter, the governorman who writes $125 million annually. Besides endowing a chair in his name, Marcos recently hired a New
York public relations firm to polish his image.
The Tufus president, Jean Mayer, says his acceptance of the Marcos chair is entirely appropriate because Tufus will be a leader in the world. Mayer asserts that Marcos, when viewed with other world leaders, is not all that bad and that Marcos must be viewed as a "perversion" of long-standing involvement in the Philippines.
COMPARED WITH Mayer,
Dean Peter Krogh of Georgetown's School of Foreign
Service in Washington has had an easy time justifying his
welcoming of $750,000 from the Libyan government. Although
student and faculty protested during a museum
exhibition there has been little reaction to
the Libyan endowment, except from humorous columnist Art
Buckwald.
In response to a Krogh statement that "one cannot
Palestinians represent protesters' 'real issue'
To the editor:
I am an Iranian studying at the University of Kansas, and I feel obligated to present my new in your paper *Ancient Islam and Absolution*. It seems that the real issue, the Palestinians, has been forgotten and that freedom of speech is the focus right now. As a professor of religious people, having the chance to enjoy democracy and freedom of speech, to understand what the Palestinians are subjected to, or not, by "democracy," in the West Bank and even in Lebanon. To Americans, freedom of speech is such a precious principle, such a "heavenly fruit," that it is essential to have freedom of speech. Maybe living in a country with a 200-year heritage of democratic rights, not having any internal wars and not having extremism, oppression and dictatastrophy allows them to think in that manner.
Many of the protesters come from families that have lost one of their dear ones in bombings, shellings and war. Most of these people no longer have a family because their family members cannot live together without a homeland.
Please do not assume that
KANSAN Letters
justify any shouts, chantings or interruptions. I just want to let Americans know that many of the protesters come from this background. Rabin said that we have no reason to believe when there is no democracy and that is why we behaved like that. Well, he is right in that there is no democracy, but what he forgot to mention was who supplies arms to Jordan, who supplies arms to Jordani Iran and Saudi Arabia.
I was in Hoch that night. I even booed a few times but I realized that was not helping at all. Therefore, I tried to talk to protesters to stop it. Some of them did but it was somewhat out of hand. We the recent massacre in London had something to do with this. Whatever happened is not approved by Arabs and Iranians. We tried to convey our message to Americans but we did not do it in the "American way." We criticize ourselves for this, although we firmly believe that what we tried to tell Americans was right and just; the way we said it was not the best.
freeze out a country because their ideology differs from ours," Buchwald cited Libya's unabashed support of international terrorists and suggested that Krogh pursue an Idi Amir Chan in Genocide, the murder of hundreds of the Chair of Aparheid and a Brezneh Studies Program in Human Rights.
Emza Mahfooz Iran graduate student
Not surprisingly, Georgetown and Libya bill the contribution differently—as an attempt to improve understanding between the American and Arab peoples. Unanswered is the question of whether this cross-cultural communication will be effective and aid and comfort to groups bent on Israel's annihilation.
NEVER TO BE OUTDRE, the shah also has actively sought to buy immunity from international criticism. Princeton, the university and, most recently, the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota have seen fit to-acquaint itself with a population which 70 percent of the native population is illiterate. For its Humphrey tribute, Iran is sending $25,000—a gift, commented one former Capitol Hill staffer, who marveled "the late senator."
It is clear that the attempts of Marcos, Qaddafi and the shah to cleanse their images have not been wholly successful. But this remains that American universities are embracing suspect money with open arms and clear consciences, while eager to supply dwindling foundation and federal finance-
ing, have judged potential contributions by their size, regardless of source.
Are our universities in such desperate straits? It seems equally clear that the recipients of these questionable monies are not in fact those schools most financially pressured, but that the university need not accept it. Even beggars can be choosers.
MAYER SAYS HES’S "drawn the line" and refused gift offers. He turned down a South Korean advance “because they’re in the business of buying Americans” and says he wouldn’t have taken Lebanese money. But he has his own business in South Korea, less an American product gone bad than the Philippines? Is Qaddafi really any “worse” than Marcos?
Defending acceptance of the Marcos gifts, the chairman of the Tufts trustees, Allan D. Callow, has declared that "Tufts has bought nothing that would raise an important point for all schools faced with like situations: What exactly does 'opportunity' signify for the donor? The foreign end of the United States, in some, 'opportunity' promises stronger ties between foreign countries and the United States. For others, however, such opportunities serve as conventions that world's most reprehensible dictators to attempt to legitimize their rules.
David M. Tufts, a 1978 graduate of Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, writes on international topics.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Published at the University of Kerns daily Announcer (www.uakern.edu) on Tuesday, June 2 and July 6 except Saturday, Sunday and holidays. Subscriptions to total $5 are a subscriber or $15 a junior account. Subscriptions to total $2 are a subscriber or $6 a junior account. The county Student subscription is a yearly account. The county Student subscription is a nonyearly account.
Editor
Rarhara Rosewicz
Managing Editor
Jeremy Sax
Journalist
John Mueller
Carrisus Editor
John Mueller
Associate Campus Editor
Kevin Kloum
Assistant Campus Editor
Deb Miller
Gary Bedore
Associate Sports Editor
Walt Baur
Photo Editor
Elie Chamman
Editorial Editor
John Mueller
Business Manager
Patricia Thornton
Assistant Business Manager Karen Thompson
Advertising Manager Daryl Hedges
Promotional Managers Larson
National Advertising Manager Kim Mim
National Advertising Manager Kathy Prendergast
Publisher
David Dary